May 15, 2010

"... indeed, even to the Ku Klux Klan — and Politico Arena asks us to take it seriously for comment?!"

Cato via Instapundit. I'd already seen that piece — "Tea party: Dark side of conservatism" — but I hadn't blogged it because I didn't want to impinge on my good mood to take the trouble to summon up the degree of contempt it would have required. The writer, Charles Postel, an assistant professor of history at San Francisco State University, wields 19th-century history for the purpose of demonstrating that the Tea Party is racist, and says things like "The tea party leaders disavow any racist appeals from their ranks. But historically, whether it was the JBS or Goldwater, the radical right has often had a soft spot for bigots." So, in other words, the Tea Party must be prejudiced about people like this because he's prejudiced about people like that. All purveyed under the banner of academic expertise.

"Tea party: Dark side of conservatism" - when did the Lefties ever see a bright side of Conservatism?

Given the contemptuous paternalism they show for blacks and Mexicans (I'd say Hispanics, but Cubans don't have much to do with them), you wonder when they're ever going to take a long look in the mirror, but JR has it right.

Ann Althouse said...

I hadn't blogged it because I didn't want to impinge on my good mood to summoning up the degree of contempt it would have required.

I get considerably confused these days as to what should be considered "left" and "right" or "liberal" and "conservative," but "conservatives" in the Beacon Hill sense never did show any great propensity for rioting in the streets, did they? And the Fascists and National Socialists were not exactly "conservative" in any sense of the word, were they?

The common ancestor to JBS and KKK and that not to be mentioned 12 year German Reich is a compelling idea called eugenics which is the "Scientific" arm of Social Darwinism. It is so compelling to the pride of men and women that it will not disappear, but it changes shape as we last saw in the John Birchers/Rand Paul brotherhood. So the Tea Partiers are at risk of accepting some terrible doctrines and compromising with some smiling evil leaders. Let's hope instead that they follow a Sarah Palin style of Americanism and not get drawn in by the deceptions of the old time Eugenics monsters dressed up like libertarians.

This dude is presuming that today's Tea Partiers are going to fall for the old John Birch Society addictions without any evidence that they have or that they will. But a discussion of that issue is healthy for Tea Partiers who may think their movement cannot be tricked. It is not about racism; but it is about the weak people and the strong people's relationship within social groups. That often seems to translate into a race issue, but it is never a race issue at its core. At its core it is always the strong claiming a right to eliminate the weak to prevent embarrassment. Traditionally Americans protect and fight for the weak. So the Tea Partiers will not fall for this unless they get bad leadership cutting compromises with it.

It's fair enough to observe that racism, sexism, homophobia exist in America. These evils are more a function of our humanity than our ideology. There is no visible evidence that a left wing ideology diminishes their strength. Leftists worked hard for the election of Bill Clinton and John Edwards in order to advance the position of women in America. (Insert joke.) The round up of Japanese during WWII was very much a New Deal program and was opposed by the conservative Robert Taft. Even the Palmer Raids occurred during the progressive regime of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson sent Norman Thomas to jail, and Harding set him free. Throughout the twenties and thirties Russia was more a cause than a country, and the despicable crimes of Stalin were not just ignored or explained but actually praised by our artists and intellectuals....The failures of the left have only seemed to increase their self confidence and self rightousness. A conservative is aware that a too earnest pursuit of a buck can lead to many pitfalls. But no leftist is aware of the anger and venality that underlie so many of their ideals. People like Jeremy actually think they're tolerant.

Yes I guess this populist movement does not fall for the trick of fighting for the general good, or the weaker, and therefore the professor misses the point-- confusing that with racism. Why just recently the Tea Party in Maine ripped down a poster in an 8th grade classroom that featured Norman Rockwell's historic Four Freedoms' illustrations as part of a history of labour. Clearly that action was not racist.

The Tea Baggers are just as described: Bigoted, racist ultra-conservatives who think they want small government, yet take full advantage of the same "government" sponsored benefits and services they say represent wasteful spending of tax dollars.

They whine about people of color and the poor for taking advantage of what they like to describe as wasteful "government" giveaways, while collecting the very same benefits and services such as unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

I still want to see a video of photograph that represents more than a sprinkling of people attending these ridiculous Tea Bagger functions that are not WHITE.

Postel is shockingly (almost certainly willfully) ignorant of the New Deal coalition, which left Jim Crow unchallenged in exchange for a Solid (Democratic) South.

Jim Lindgren's careful analysis of the General Social Surveys conducted by the National Opinion Research Center finds that the actual racists are disproportionately found among those who hold pro-redistribution, anti-free-market views.

Those familiar with Jeremy's rants here will be unsurprised by Lindgren's finding that "compared to anti-redistributionists, strong redistributionists have about two to three times higher odds of reporting that in the prior seven days they were angry, mad at someone, outraged, sad, lonely, and had trouble shaking the blues."

Why not read something based on 21st century data, Professor Althouse? Pretty clear that tea partiers tend to be toward the extreme on race, even if you control for their underlying conservatism. It's simply not just about small government, at least for many of them.

The survey analysis you've cited measures "racial resentment" mostly in terms of whether people agree or disagree with the premise that it is racism that impedes the economic progress of African Americans.

So what we've got here, perhaps unsurprisingly given the study's sponsorship by an Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, & Sexuality, is that "racial resentment" = disagreement with the Democratic Party's social agenda. And what is found is that Tea Party supporters are more likely than Tea Party opponents to oppose that agenda.

Why just recently the Tea Party in Maine ripped down a poster in an 8th grade classroom that featured Norman Rockwell's historic Four Freedoms' illustrations as part of a history of labour. Clearly that action was not racist.

Incoherent. Is this satire or support? If satire, ASSUMING this happened, how does it "prove" racism? If support thank you for agreeing that the Tea Party Movement isn't racist....

It's funny how conservatives suddenly turn into school snobs when a professor from "a middling university" writes something critical about them. Had this professor written the same thing from a perch at a top-tier university, I'm sure the criticism would be that he was just expressing the elitism of such schools. Heads I win, tails you lose, in other words.

With regard to the merits of his article, I'd agree he probably went overboard by bringing in 19th century history. However, his discussion of the John Birch Society and groups like it is on-point. He gives specific examples of positions that the John Birch Society supported and that many in the modern Tea Party movement do. Also, it's worth noting that John Birch Society has had something of a renaissance of late, and was a co-sponsor of the last CPAC national convention. If they and people like them aren't a part of the conservative coalition, one wouldn't see such things.

Last, the line about "historically, whether it was the JBS or Goldwater, the radical right has often had a soft spot for bigots" can be easily supported. All one must do is see how things went in voting trends in the South in the 1964 Presidential election or read essays like the famous "Why the South Must Prevail" essay in National Review for some historical context on that. This professor isn't saying that all conservatives are racists or that conservatism equals racism. He is pointing out something undeniable, however, in pointing out that the conservative movement has had something of a bigot problem. Lots of thoughtful conservatives (like the late Jack Kemp) wouldn't deny that, and I seem to recall RNC chief Michael Steele making some impolitic comments about the GOP's Southern Strategy.

The success of the Republicans' "Southern Strategy" demonstrates the importance of racism in holding together the New Deal coalition. In 1964, for the first time in the history of the Republican Party, Southern whites' votes were up for grabs, not because the Republicans were racists but because Northern Democrats had finally stopped abetting segregation.

What the Southern Strategy shows is that when segregationists who are for low taxes are unable to vote in accordance with their racial views, they vote in accordance with their economic views. What Jim Lindgren's data show is that when segregationists who are otherwise for redistribution are unable to vote in accordance with their racial views, they also vote in accordance with their economic views. Race per se has nothing to do with either side's views, but one side insists on this McCarthyite approach.

Somefellow, I could care less where he went to school or even IF he went to school. The guy wrote an opinion piece, that he says was based on facts garnered from an opinion poll of tea partiers. It was no wonder he didn't link to the results, because it would have been too easy to see how he was making declarative statements of fact that were anything BUT.

Perhaps even more infuriating is that he got any further visibility for his self-serving bullshit from sites such as Politico, Cato, Instapundit and Althouse.

If I wanted to watch a circle jerk, I'd go to some teen boys' camp, or better yet, Google that.

It's funny how conservatives suddenly turn into school snobs when a professor from "a middling university" writes something critical about them. Had this professor written the same thing from a perch at a top-tier university, I'm sure the criticism would be that he was just expressing the elitism of such schools.

It's even funnier how a phony cracker barrel sage thinks he can get away with saying conservatives are school snobs when only 1 of the comments critical of the piece mentions his place of employment and the rest go after what he said, some in considerable detail.

They whine about people of color and the poor for taking advantage of what they like to describe as wasteful "government" giveaways, while collecting the very same benefits and services such as unemployment, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Well, I don't know about the Medicaid bit -- most of the tea-partiers appear to be gainfully employed. But, yes, they do accept Social Security, Medicare and unemployment benefits when necessary. After all, they've paid into them their entire working lives.

According to the Democrats, those programs are not welfare -- they're insurance! It's what we've always been told. Interesting that the story's now changed and they're nothing more than government giveaways that the hateful, hypocritical tea-partiers are only too happy to accept.

By the way, I'm in favor of a flat tax with no deductions. Nevertheless, I've always taken the mortgage deduction on my income tax return. I suppose that makes me a hypocrite in your eyes.

The thing I like about Stephen's source is the language used to present the data. I don't think I've ever seen a data so corrupted by its presentation before.

For example, it opens with:

"Many believed that the election of Barack Obama brought to a close the long, painful, and ugly history of race and racism in the United States."

Is this sort of emotional buildup necessary in a somewhat formal presentation of data? This should already alert the reader that something isn't quite right. Whatever that is, it's answered in the following sentence:

"But as the incident with Henry Louis Gates last summer, and the more recent outbursts of the Tea Party activists suggest, racial divisions remain."

Are you serious? This is based on so much subjective crap as to call into question the integrity of the data right off the bat. Nope, no agenda here!

I stopped counting at '8' in three paragraphs the authors' use of the term "true believers" to describe those who strongly believe in "the movement". This is just garbage.

It's not too hard to keep dissecting the language of the presentation, but those two glaring examples above are enough to make me question the integrity of the findings.

The main flaw is the failing of the report to establish what the so-called "mainstream" view is in any meaningful way. The middle statistic in the first graph is just comical - it's not racist, it's just a statement of fact and the fact that the authors consider it racist is quite telling.

"When they claim that a moderate American president is a “Communist,”"

Moderate? Only a university professor could think Obama is moderate. Communist? Sure. A few people have called the President a Communist, therefore, sure--the whole TEA Party represents this view. By the same "logic" can I surmise that all Democrats subscribe to the "9-11 was an inside job" theory? Since some did, or do believe such rubbish.

Now that I think of it, there was a lecturer at UW who was a prominent truther, hence all university teachers are truthers too and since Charles Postel teaches at a university, he also must be a truther.

I thought that harsh rhetoric can make people more extreme, as the Left said all during Bushs term about his policy on militant Islam. Either they don't buy it, or they hope to turn a massive political movement into a violent extreme movement for political gain

The tea partiers came to protest federal action. Today, local and state governments are hemorrhaging jobs and slashing essential services. The tea partiers are boiling mad because of the stimulus bill meant to stop the bleeding.

What a tard! The Tea Party is about reversing the trend of irresponsible reckless fiscal policy by both state and federal government, which is the reason why they are "hemorrhaging jobs and slashing essential services". Note that the writer actually hit on an unmentionable truth; that the stimulus was always about propping up government jobs, not those in the private sector! Note too that the private sector is starting to recover, yet the public sector, even with the cash give-a-way they called a stimulus package, is still marred in financial crisis.